Scans_Daily

Bringing the crack since December 2003

Malum Discordiae : The FBI kills Megaupload

Greetings, Ladies and Gentlemen! Chocochuy reporting for duty and bringing you some news from the global community.

As you might recall, yesterday was the peaceful blackout of pages like Wikipedia, Google, Mozilla and our very own Dreamwidth in order to protest against the SOPA bill. Well, just some hours ago Megaupload was shut down by the FBI, thus causing the arrest of its inner circle and the loss of countless Terabytes of both illegal and safe files. Retribution from hackers all over the globe was not denied and hours later the group that calls itself Anonymous hacked several government sitesas well as asking all cybernauts to join their revolution against the rich 1%. It might be kinda exaggerated to say this but I am certain that were witnessing the genesis of the First World Internet War. In my honest opinion I think the loss of Megaupload may be a heavy loss for most cybernauts and it may also herald the beginning of some authoritarian movements if the FBI can go shutting down websites when the SOPA has not been approved yet. What we are really seeing is a struggle between two powerful forces, none of them wanting to give up, that will change the way we use the internet from now on if a peaceful solution is not found.

I will be glad to hear your opinions in this matter, comrades, especially if this SOPA bill goes out of control and tries targeting our beloved fanfics/fanarts.

Here is an old Captain America picture done by Frank Miller. It may be over-used but it seems quite fitting.

The loss of Megaupload (if it's "lost," rather than "temporarily blocked") won't be a big deal in the larger scheme of "anti-piracy" actions. Mediafire, Rapidshare, 4shared, Gigasize... there are dozens of other sites with similar features. "Store/share big files online" isn't going to get harder with Megaupload gone.

However, if anyonymous stays focused on gov't sites for a while, that'll really throw a wrench in things, because if twelve hours of server-tweaking doesn't fix things on their, they'll start looking for people to arrest. (Not that they won't be looking for people to arrest already, but it's a back-burner project now. If the FBI's website is down for a week, they'll start demanding arrest warrants for everyone who tweets the word #anonymous.)

I'd like to believe my gov't is not stupid enough to break the world wide web. I can't quite get there. I'm not, however, worried about the future of the internet, which existed before the www prefix. I'm rather delighted that all the attention is focused on the big fileshare sites, as if none of the previous methods existed.

Saw my first pro-SOPA/PIPA tv ad today. So *weird.* Fascinating how it didn't mention at all what kind of measures would be taken to end all this "foreign theft" that's destroying American businesses. Also interesting that they never mention that the actions that are so "destructive" may be entirely legal for the people who're doing them.

I suspect that if SOPA/PIPA get enacted (which I doubt, at this point) and start going after sites, fanfic/fanart are far, far down on the list of targets. They want to kill YouTube and ThePirateBay. Time to haul out the Cute Cat Theory of the Internet, and remind politicians that threatening obscure geeky hacker sites will go over just fine with most voters, but threatening the lolcats will get them thrown out of office.

My first reaction: a colossal spit-take all over my keyboard at the fact the big names were arrested here in NZ. And then I was embarrassed that our jackass right-wing government are so keen to ingratiate themselves with power players (see our anti-torrenting legislation for example).

In fairness though, I've downloaded many hundreds of files from MU, and every single one of them infringed copyright, so it's hard to muster *righteous* indignation. That said, I *did* assume the site owners/admins maintained better plausible deniability. I'm a bit surprised by how blase they appear to have been.

From I've read, this looks like a kid acting out against the protest being made against a bad idea. They went after the first sharing website they could think of, looks like. I really shudder to think next what'll happen. I hope this bill doesn't get passed.

I can't help but think tan Anonymous reaction is exactly what the law enforcement wants. Now that pirates are attacking the government, it lends weight to the argument that they need the SOPA/PIPA to keep them under control. I can't help but see this as a measured, carefully planned attack to justify draconian regulations (even though it shows that laws to police the internet are already in place. And that the whole world must obey US law, even if you never plan on going to America.)

I think this is the US government trying to kill net neutrality - Megaupload was always prompt in removing copyrighted content on request, as it was required to do. It's too hard to go after the millions of people sharing a few files at a time, so they're going after the content hosts. Google seems aware of this, at least, and they've got deep pockets to match the MPAA companies (which is what US lawmaking really comes down to).

Oh, come on!I'll have to keep my work files on some other file sharing place then.(we've had lots of documents to share in the company here, so someone suggested megaupload, to avoid using our internal network and slowing everyone down)

Mediafire was so much more convenient than MU. It was already a troublesome thing having to wait for the Free download speeds, but then it just kept putting more ads and Megavideos on their website when I just wanted to download one file.

Heck I saw more and more files that I wanted to download being put on other file-uploading sites. Megaupload may have been one of the originals, but it was no longer the 'go-to' website if you wanted to upload files. It got bigger than that until I had no idea what Megaupload was really for anymore to be honest.

I honestly don't see how so many people are getting angry over this. Sure, yeah, most of the traffic may have been legitimate, but that doesn't matter. If I worked hard, 9 to 5, five days a week, selling stuff out of my house legally, but still let people sell dope out of my house, it doesn't matter that most of my income was legitimate. I was sanctioning, and in all likelihood knowingly, illegal activity, and did nothing to stop it. It does;t matter that most was legitimate. Then swizz is in no danger because he's a wealthy celebrity, and there are so many other options out there. I just don't see the problem.

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